From Homeless to $600k Business With a Beat-Up Pickup Truck
In this interview, Matt and Joni, founders of Sonoma Strong Hauling, recount how Matt went from homelessness, jail, and rehab to building a junk‑removal business that now generates about $50,000 in monthly revenue with roughly 35% net profit. They describe the humble beginnings—working nights at Safeway, using a beat‑up pickup and a utility trailer, and landing the first customer via a free Craigslist post. The conversation dives deep into the low‑cost, high‑impact marketing tactics that fueled growth: candy‑dish handouts at real‑estate offices, targeted outreach to storage units, senior living facilities, and open houses; leveraging Facebook groups, a Google Business Profile, and a YouTube channel to attract repeat business and referrals. They explain how they diversified revenue by reselling furniture, selling scrap metal, and charging per‑load fees ranging from $695 to $995, while maintaining a 35% margin. The founders discuss scaling the operation—adding a larger dump truck, hiring drivers, a marketing specialist, and a virtual assistant for lead scraping. They share key inflection points such as landing a $45k hoarder job, learning the importance of professional branding (uniforms, price sheets, high‑quality photos), and reinvesting profits rather than buying equipment prematurely. Finally, they offer practical advice for aspiring service‑business owners: start now, do the work yourself to understand what drives leads, grow only when the market signals capacity, and use free, creative outreach methods. They also mention community‑building efforts like a YouTube channel with hundreds of instructional videos and a junk‑removal expo for other entrepreneurs.
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Right now we're doing 50 grand a month.
He just wanted to make an extra $2,000 a month. We were broke and we didn't have money to throw into advertising. We had no business experience at all. He started it as a side hustle with just a beat up pickup truck, working nights at Safeway. Get off at like 8 in the morning and that's when he would start.
We did $87,000 part time. We just finished $49,000 job recently. One thing I love about the trash business is we're making money picking up trash. We're making money if we sell the trash and we're making money if we scrap the trash. You go in the house and you're wondering, why did they call you up to get rid of this nice couch? So you can take that couch, put it on Marketplace for 200 bucks, 300 bucks and make money on top of money.
You're charging a few hundred bucks to take it and then you're selling it as well.
Exactly.
Beautiful. What would you do if you were broke, 35 years old, just went to prison and just got out of rehab and you need to make money? Well, you start a junk removal business. That's what Matt did. And Today he's making $50,000 a month with 35% profit margins. My favorite parts about this story are his marketing methods. They are old school, but they work. Anyone can do these marketing methods to start any service business and get their phone ringing off the hook. So if you have any interest in starting a business with very low startup costs, very high margin, very approachable, with a zillion ways you can market it, you're going to love this episode. What was the first thing you saw or heard that made you want to start this business?
So pretty much I actually got out of jail, went to rehab, and I was working on the Salvation army trucks and we were picking up donations and a lot of times it was like stuff that we couldn't take. It had like cat hair on there, dog hair on it, or scratched up. So people would always ask, if you can't take it, who can we call? And that's where I got the idea from.
So were you working or was this a volunteer thing?
No, I was actually in rehab for eight months.
Okay, what were you in rehab for, if you don't mind me asking?
Drug addiction. So I went from being homeless to jail to rehab, to being broke as hell, working in a deli, making $15 an hour, to actually starting a business from scratch. And now we're making $50,000 a month.
So from rehab to broke, to prison. I know I'm messing up the order here. To working in a deli making sandwiches, to making $50,000 a month with your hauling business.
That's correct.
That's inspiring. That's impressive. Okay, I gotta hear the story. So you get out of jail, you get out of rehab, and you start to see that there's a need for junk removal, Right, and that kind of plants the seed, right?
Yeah, 100%.
What do you do from there?
Well, he started junk removal, you know, as a side hustle because he was working at Safeway making $15 an hour. And when you are having to restart your life again when you're 35 years old, you know, you're, you're really starting from scratch. So, you know, he started it as a side hustle and really had no idea how much money is in the trash business. He just wanted to make an extra $2,000 a month. That's all he wanted. Just to be able to, you know, not just make ends meet, but $15 an hour. You're barely making ends meet, so you definitely aren't saving any of that. So he started it as a side hustle with just a beat up pickup truck. You know, he was working nights at Safeway and then he would, you know, get off at like 8 in the morning and that's when he would start picking up people's trash. And I remember that he, he would like leave at one o' clock in the morning and he was, you know, pulling this little utility trailer that we eventually was able to add to our truck. And he was pulling that out quietly because we live in an apartment complex, and hooking that up to the back of his truck so he could like take it to work at 2am so he can haul junk after work. So it definitely isn't an overnight success. And it was hard work and dedication and just really that hunger of needing to change and doing whatever it takes to, you know, to make it happen. So that's, that's how it got started.
That's amazing. So how did you get your first customer, Matt?
So the first customer came from Craigslist. I did a free post on there in the labor section and I got a phone call from a realtor. She gave me a call. I went over there and there's a bunch of trash inside of the garage.
So.
So I underbid the job. I said, I'll do the whole job for $200. So I loaded up in my pickup truck. I'm heading to the dumps. And I remember thinking, do I have enough money to cover the dump fees? Because I was so broke at the time, and I actually did. I got on the scale. It was like, $100 for the dump fee, So I made a hundred bucks, but minus the gas and stuff. So I didn't really make that much money, But I popped my junk removal cherry that day.
Okay, you. You saw the light of entrepreneurship real quick. Please subscribe to my channel. I know it's kind of lame to ask, but it means a lot. Thanks. Had you ever done anything for yourself? Anything entrepreneurial before that?
Not really. To tell you the truth, the only thing I ever did was sell drugs and sell CDs in a parking lot.
Okay, and you were 35 when you started this, right?
So I was 35 years old, yeah.
Okay, so that first Craigslist ad gets you your first customer. How do you get your next 10 customers?
So, pretty much what we did was I stopped at the dollar store, bought some candy dishes, order some business cards off of Vistaprint, and we hit up every single real estate office in Sonoma county and dropped off candy dishes, introduced ourselves, gave them business cards, and let them know what we did, and that started getting Realtors on the team that way.
Candy dishes? You mean like a. Just a dish with candy to put in it that they put at, like, their front desk?
Yeah. So, you know, it's a dollar store. You can get all kinds of cheap dishes. Right. And we would just put, you know, dollar store candy in there with our business cards around, and we would just walk in, introduce ourselves. And at the very first, what we did was we were giving them out to all of them. We would go in their cubbies and put, you know, and then this way was so much better because really, only the Realtors that were interested in your service was taking the card. So it was much, much more, you know, less wasteful and more efficient that way. But we actually got a lot of Realtors on our team from doing that.
Okay. So I'm like, I have such a. A keen interest. Addiction, obsession with, like, unique marketing tactics. And so I want to dive in on this. I think this is incredible. You go to Dollar General, you spend a couple bucks, you buy a bag of Starburst or Suckers or something, and you roll into a Keller Williams. I'm just making sure I understand this correctly. Any real estate office. And originally, initially, you start putting a dish and some candy in every, like, cubicle for every Realtor. And then you realize we're not getting our Bang for our buck here. This is kind of wasteful. They're not all using it. We just need to put one at the front desk. Is that right?
Or in their staff. Okay, whichever, you know.
Okay.
Walk in, and you talk to whoever's behind the desk, introduce yourself, let me know what they're doing, and tell, you know, and then they'll either keep it right there in the front or put it in the staff room.
And then we started doing it to storage unit facilities, apartment complexes, senior living facilities, just everywhere.
What gave you this idea?
The reason why we started the business, and no one knew who we were. So I was like, we just got to separate ourselves from the competition and get our brand out there. So we were doing everything. We're doing that I was advertising on Facebook in groups. I was on Instagram advertising. I was actually on Facebook in the search bar, searching Realtors in Sonoma County. And now I'd add those realtors to my Facebook page. So whenever I started posting pictures of junk removal jobs that we started doing, they would see that. So I got over 2000 realtors that I'm friends with right now, and I would say, we have a big percentage of them that use us on, like, monthly.
I think one of the things that really helped us is, you know, when we started, we were broke, and we didn't have money to throw into advertising and Google Ads, so we had to be really creative in ways to get our name out there. And these are all things that, you know, yeah, you have to put your boots on and you have to work a little hard, but they're free. It doesn't cost you anything. And it's really helped our business grow so much because we have such an organic reach. Another thing we used to do is drive around and see open houses, and we would stop and make sure, and we'd actually go in there and introduce ourselves to the realtor that was there. Or at the very least, we would look at the sign and type their name into Facebook and see if we weren't friends with them yet. We would friend them. But a lot of times we just started seeing, oh, we're already friends with them. We're already friends with them.
Yeah, I'm just picturing you, like, about to walk in the door. You look up Mary Williams, you add her as a friend, you walk in, you say, we're Facebook friends. Oh, it's as of three seconds ago. So like you said, you were. Your greatest superpower was that you were broken. And I. I wish more people could understand that. One Thing I say on this podcast more than any other saying, and the people listening or watching right now are rolling their eyes because they know what I'm about to say is constraints equal creativity. Like, if I were a tattoo getting man, I would put that on my forehead. Constraints are good in life, in business, in anything. It forces you to be creative. It forces you to come up with ideas. Like a candy dish. What? Like, specifically, do you remember? What did you see? What did you experience that made you go there? Like, first we need to buy candy dishes, because that's just so random but genius.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that we seen that somewhere.
Because you know who it was? It was actually my father. My father's a hustler. He used to sell cars. And he told me, matt, you got to do it the old school way. Get some candy. Go drop off some business cards at every single real estate office. I was like, you know what, pops? That's a smart idea. So that's what we did.
Yeah. So a dish of candy, some candy. What are the. What are the flavors of choice? Like, what kind of candy we talking? I know it doesn't really matter, but.
Yeah, it doesn't. I would typically get, you know, like the. The green. I think they're Andy's chocolate mints.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, stuff like that.
That's good. Nicer stuff. And do you have any bearing on, like, how many realtors said no? Like, I don't want that. No, thank you.
Not really. Only when we redid it again during COVID when people were like, oh, stand back, Stay away. Where's your mask at? Other than that, when we first started doing it, no one said no. They were happy. Oh, thank you for coming by. Hey, let's introduce you to everyone in the office. Hey. This is Matthew with Sonoma Strong Hauling. And one cool thing is, too. When a realtor uses you and likes you, they're going to tell everyone in the office.
Yeah, yeah. Like, they're working with multiple clients on a regular basis. Other realtors on a regular basis. Like, I've said this a zillion times as well, but the woman who founded this chain of restaurants called Chicken Salad Chick, all they sell is chicken salad. It's a franchise. It's a national brand. A hundred million dollar brand. She got her start by only going through real estate agents, teachers lounges, and salons, because she's like, those three people are interacting with hundreds of people on a regular basis, and they will spread my gospel. So it sounds like you were. You were ahead of the curve there. You probably don't remember this, but how many, like, how many realtor offices would you say you place these candy dishes at?
Oh, my gosh. Well, really, our goal was every real estate office in Sonoma County. So. And that's super overwhelming when you think about it. But we broke it down. So let's see how many are in Hillsburg, which is a small town of about 10,000 people. And so, you know, you go on Google search and get all of their. The names and addresses, and you just. You drive around and do that, and then you see how many is in Windsor and then Santa Rosa. So a lot of times people are like, oh, that's so overwhelming. How do you do it? But you just break it up into chunks. And then sometimes we separated and, you know, he took an area and I took an area, and we just always had some in the car. So when we were somewhere and we seen an office that we didn't hit up, that we would just run in there really quick.
I just did a quick search. There's half a million people in Sonoma County. I know there are about 2 million real estate agents. So about half a percent of every person in America is a real estate agent. Right. So let's say in Sonoma county, that's going to be 2,500 people. Let's say there's five agents per office. That's 500 offices. Now, many realtors aren't in an office. Let's say there's 300 real estate agent offices in Sonoma County. That's a lot, right? But if someone really, like, literally wanted to get all of them husband and wife, I mean, you could knock that out in a week, 10 a day per person. That's incredible. And that's just like, you could probably build a whole business on that week's worth of passing out business cards. Like, eventually, you know, you would have. You would exhaust that route and have to go something else. But did that feed you, like, leads for a good bit? Just that one strategy.
We landed one huge job from one of my favorite realtors back in the day. It was a $45,000 job, and I had no idea how to even price a job. And the cool thing was it was about five minutes from the dumps. So if I didn't walk into that office, I never would have got that job. So one thing that I call myself, I call myself a realtor stalker. So I'm going into these offices introducing myself. We're walking into these open houses introducing ourselves. I'm adding Them on Facebook, I'm adding them on Instagram, and I'm adding them on LinkedIn. So sooner or later we're going to be friends and they're going to see me posting all the time about junk removal. So we make a lot of money with our realtors.
Yeah. What other marketing methods did you do those first few months that paid off, or did that one keep you busy?
Oh, gosh, we do. So we did. Never did just one thing. We did lots and lots of different things. Storage units, you could pretty much do the same thing. Go in there, introduce yourself, and sometimes they'll put you on a. On a vendor's list, but you can get some jobs doing that.
So pretty much I ordered signs off the line on UZ Marketing. We're putting those all on the busy intersections by funeral homes, by apartment complexes, by storage units. We were doing that. I was posting every single day in Facebook groups. So your viewers out there that have a service business, if they don't know, you can add yourself to a bunch of Facebook groups, like Buy now groups in your area, houses for rent in your area, free stuff in your area, and you can post every single day in those groups. And I got a lot of business that way too. And then pretty much just rolling around. If I seen like a. A mover, I would introduce myself, let them know, hey, I'm a junk hauler. Here's my business card. We can shoot work to each other. I would see a maid service. I do the same thing with them. If I seen a handyman, I introduced myself, I would say like this. Closed mouths don't get fed. So I was out there passing out my business cards like Halloween candy. So I wanted everyone to know who we were. Cause no one knew who we were really. We had a website, but it was just. It was no SEO yet, no nothing. So no one really knew who we were.
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I do, because when Matt first came up with the idea, junk removal and stuff, I was like, okay, because, you know, I'm all for him starting his own business, but I asked him, I was like, what's your goal with this? Like, where do you want to take this? And he just said, I just want to make an extra $2,000 a month. And I didn't say anything out loud, but in my head, I was like, oh, that's $2,000 a month picking up people's junk, you know, And I just said, you know what? You'll probably get that someday. And we Definitely made over $2,000 our very first month.
Amazing. What about by month 6 or month 12? What were your sales and profits looking like?
So I was doing it part time. In our first year, we did $87,000 part time in our profit margin. Profit or revenue? 70% because I wasn't paying labor, nothing like that. She would help me on the jobs. All we had really were dump fees, insurance, and a few things. But our, yeah, we're making good money.
So 60,000 profit, roughly your first year doing it part time?
Correct.
And still working at Safeway?
Still working at Safeway, yeah.
And then, Joni, were you working or did you guys have kids to juggle?
We don't have small kids. So I was working. I was working in a school system. You know, if it was a job that needed two hands, he would schedule it for after three and then on weekends. So he was solo all day and then. And then I would help him when I got off work and then on weekends.
Man, you guys are inspiring. Like, you're out there, like, working in the educational system. You clock out, then you go start lifting couches with your husband. Yeah, like, that's incredible. That's the American. That's literally the American dream. What were some inflection points along the way in your business, like what were some discoveries like what did you learn along the way that changed everything? Or like the way you price things or when you first hired someone or when your sales really took off. I'm curious to hear about those moments.
Yeah. Because you know, we, we had no business experience at all. So absolutely everything about running a business we just learned and if we didn't, you know, we couldn't pay somebody to build our website. So I just learned how to do one and I'm not, wasn't tech savvy at all, but so I did our website and I learned, learned what SEO was. I didn't even know what it stood for. So. And we implemented all of that. So we've really learned along the way actually that there was a lot of things that we did right and we didn't realize we were doing it right. We were just doing what we could afford to do, you know, and learned how to do. One of the things that we did right off the bat was our name. I had no idea. I liked Sonoma strong because I like everybody's saying that and it sounds like good strong hauling junk removal name. But little did I know that having Sonoma in our name was very, very helpful with our SEO search. So that was good. And then a lot of things that we do on Google business business profile, we take pictures and upload them and we're always taking pictures of us like in uniform. But that's one of the things Matt learned is to show up professional because we didn't do that in the very beginning. He would show up in just a T shirt and you know, you wouldn't, you can't really charge enough. People don't really take you seriously. So it's one of the very first things we tell people to do. Like when you do your first job, reinvest and get, if you can't just, just a shirt and one hat, like just one so you can show up and look professional. And then we also learned how important it is to, to brand and not just take pictures of junk because we would take a picture of a pile of junk and then an after picture of junk and post that. And we learned that that's not, that's just a pile of junk that's not going to make anybody stop and stop a scroll. No one's going to remember who you are. You got to put your name, your brand like in your face and you're, you're the person that's going to be, you know, hauling away their trash. And show that, you know, to people. So we've definitely learned things along the way.
Yeah. Did you have some, Matt?
I was going to say yeah. When we started posting pictures and kind of like telling our story, like say, hey, we're a family owned business. I'm the owner of Sonoma Strong Holland. We just started this business in 2018 after the fires. This is a family owned business. They see pictures of us looking professional, smiling. Those got more hits and likes. And so I started boosting posts like that or Facebook boost like that. And we started getting more hits that way, more jobs that way. Just looking more professional.
Yeah. So when you started, you just had like a beat up old pickup truck and you were throwing it in the bed and then you added a trailer, Is that right?
That's correct.
What was the next iteration? Like a box truck.
So we went from a pickup truck. I put some wood walls on the sides, started charging $300 for that for a load. Then I bought a utility trailer. After the utility trailer, I saved up my money. I bought a bigger truck that can haul a dump trailer. And from there I went to the NPR Isuzu dump truck, which all the big franchises use. Like 1-800-got- junk, and junk king. Use those and it's easier to send guys out. So we got two of those and we just added a box truck too.
Okay, what are your employees look like today?
So we got me the Jojo. I got my main guy Julio. We call him the baby maker because he has five kids. So he's the head leader of the one truck. And then I got my stepson, he's. We call him Hot Tub because he moves a lot of hot tubs all the time. And then we got some good guys. A marketing guy now. My buddy Blake from Top Dog Digital. He does our Facebook ads. Now. This is all brand new. We always did everything ourselves. So I got him working for us too. And then I got a VA named Donna out in the Philippines, which is scraping a bunch of commercial emails and stuff like that. So we're gonna start attacking more commercial business. So there's quite a few of us behind the scenes.
Okay. Yeah. What does your pricing look like today? How much do you charge for a load and what are your margins like today?
So we charge anywhere from 695 all the way up to 995, depending on what kind of stuff it is. Is it heavier material? Is it a hoarder house? When it's a hoarder house and you got to shovel this stuff up and load it in the truck. And it's a nasty job. You want to charge more money, but if you show up, it's a bunch of cardboard or a bunch of green waste. People aren't going to pay that high price, so you got to drop it down a little bit. So right now, we're doing 50 grand a month, and we're doing about 35%. Net payrolls around 15 grand down. Fees are around $4,000. The commercial insurance, we have credit card fees. A whole bunch of other stuff goes in there, but we're netting around 35%.
I mean, that's incredible. 17. That's like 17 grand a month. And I imagine your employees are doing most of the work. Like, you're doing more administrative stuff at this point, Is that right?
Yeah, I'll be on and off the truck every once in a while. Like today, the guys went out and knocked the jobs out. Me and her went shopping for granted. We're doing some new countertops at the house. Really? I'll do a lot of the marketing, and I do a lot of the pricing. The jobs on big jobs, other than that, they do all the small jobs and stuff. So we'll hop on the truck so we can film YouTube videos. As YouTube actually helped us a lot in this business. We had no idea. We started a YouTube channel. And what happened was we started getting followers, people following us. Right. And then it started being people in our area that actually own a junk removal business, too. And then what happened was they felt like they knew us, so whenever they couldn't get to a job, they refer us. And then what would happen, too, is everyone that would watch us, which hit our website up and check it out. And then we start ranking more on the web. Yeah.
Even though they weren't potential customers, them looking for you increased your search visibility in Sonoma County.
Exactly.
It made you more relevant. Oh, man. Okay, so 35% margins. You got a handful of employees. What was that $50,000 job like? Like, what type of a job was that? And could you get more of those?
Oh, yeah, we just finished one that was a 49, 000 job recently. It was a hoarder house in Penn Grove. It was what, like, I think 50 loads there. And then the first one we did that was $40,000. You can tell them about it. It was a. It was a horror situation, too, huh?
Yeah, Our very first one.
Yeah.
Yeah, our very first one. It was a huge job. And when we first pulled up and looked at it, Matt's like, oh, no. Oh, no. And I'm like, hey, if we want to be big, we got to do big things. But, I mean, most people that were just starting would have said no to it because it was so many loads, and all we had was the truck and utility trailer. At the time, it wasn't even the big one. So we actually had to rent a dumpster for that one because it was huge. And that took us a while, too, because he still had, you know, he was doing it part time. It was still a side hustle, but there were squatters there, and it was like, it was very much a learning situation for a first big job.
Yeah. But I have to think it was very profitable still. Right. Like, your only costs were the dump truck rental and your time and some
gas and actually got free labor, too. Because when I showed up to the job, there was a guy that was a squatter out front throwing wood into a fire. He had, like, a shoestring with a seashell on it. And he see me flirt. He's like, hey, how's it going? I said, hey, we're here to clean up the property. He said, okay, I'm going to help you guys load up. He started helping us load up the trailer. So I got free ranking.
Maybe he thought if he helped you, he wouldn't get kicked out.
Pretty much.
What's been your biggest job ever, and how did you get that job?
So we had two that were 40,000 and one that was 49,000. And all three of those ones were hoarder jobs. One was a Facebook ad, one was from a realtor, and. And the other one was a referral, so they came from different directions.
Hmm. Okay. Are most of your leads coming inbound now? Like, you're just. Your phone's ringing?
Yes. So most of my leads are coming from a lot of repeat business, lot from Google business profile and mainly Facebook. And then us is ranking on the map pack just helps us a lot.
What's one thing about this business that you just love that you didn't expect
this stuff that you find. You find the cool stuff, you can resell it, you can donate it. There's so much cool stuff you find.
If someone wanted to start this business, what would you advise them to do differently than what you did when you first started? What would you have done differently that you'd advise people to do?
So what I would do is look more professional in the very beginning. That's a tough question. What I would do is charge more money, too. I know. It kind of sucks when you first start out. You're lowballing yourself because you want to get every single job. But if you look more professional, you show up with a price sheet. I didn't have a price sheet, so I was just kind of like off the head giving prices. Make sure you got a price sheet. You show up and you sell yourself first before you even give a price. Before I show up not looking professional with a white T shirt, I'll look at the pile and I would just tell them a price. So what you want to do is you want to look professional, show up with a price sheet, have that gift of gab, talk to the customer, make a compliment on their house, their dog, their wrist on their watch, and build that trust. Walk around the property, BS a little bit, and then hit them with the price. So you got to build that trust first. That's one thing I would do. And then I would say just get out there and just do exactly what we did and reinvest. When the market tells you when to grow, I see a lot of guys, they see a YouTube video or they see someone on Instagram saying they made a thousand dollars in two hours. And so what they do is they go buy that brand new pickup truck, that brand new dump trailer, and now they got payments, but they ain't got the business. So you want the market to tell you when to grow. That's one thing we did. Yeah, we, we just grew our business a little bit slower. We didn't pay for ads, and I like that. And I felt like that really helped us in the long run.
Yeah, you want to expand when you feel like, stretched to your limits. Right. Any other advice you'd give people in this industry to help them have success?
Well, one, I mean, this seems really simple, but just start. Some people, yeah, are, are afraid to start. And they research. They research so much and they want everything to be perfect. And it's, it's not going to be perfect. And there's some things that you're going to do that you may not, you like, that may not be successful right away. And then you just, you know, you learn to pivot and try it, try it this way. Another thing some people do is they'll, they want to grow so fast that they'll pay people, they'll pay people to do their, their SEO. They'll, they'll pay to be put on, you know, to rank them. Number one, they'll pay all the, all this stuff when you pay somebody to, like, do all their Facebook posts and stuff like that. But if you, if, when you start, if you're not doing those things yourself, then you're not really going to know what's working. And that clicked with me one time when I was doing some work on our website, and then I hit update. And then the next day, Matt's phone rang off the hook. And then if I had somebody else that was doing that, there would be no aha moments. Oh, when I posted that this got a ton of shares and my phone is ringing, or when I updated this, my phone started ringing more. But when you're doing things yourself, you can. You notice those little things, and that's really important.
And then when you eventually hire an agency, you'll know if they're doing a good job or not. You'll know to hold them accountable. Because so often we hire an agency on day one, and it's like, where are my leads? When they might have a legitimate excuse for no leads yet.
Right.
Like the ads are still warming up. Or conversely, like, oh, my gosh, I'm crushing it. And really, you could be doing much, much better, but you have a crap agency. You know, you don't know that stuff. If you never spent time in the weeds yourself, is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have asked you that I might have missed out on?
Oh, revenue streams.
Yeah. So what are your revenue streams outside of just junk?
So that's one thing I love about the trash business is it's money on top of money on top of money. So we're making money picking up the trash. We're making money if we sell the trash, and we're making money if we scrap the trash. When I say scrap, we come across copper, we come across aluminum. So you make money that way. And a lot of times people. We're in the suburbs, a lot of the times, those are the people that use our service. So you. You go in the house and you're wondering, why did they call you up to get rid of this nice couch so you could take that couch, put it on Marketplace for 200 bucks, 300 bucks, and make money on top of money. And that's one thing I love about the trash business.
You're charging a few hundred bucks to take it, and then you're selling it as well.
Exactly.
Beautiful.
And then one of the things that has been extremely rewarding and extremely profitable is we have people that watches on YouTube that, you know, they have started a business because of us, and we decided to hold a junk expo where we have speakers that really know how to run a business and they can learn even more and they can network with one another and meet us and get motivated and maybe see the truck that we own up close and stuff.
That's incredible. Matt, Joni, you two are inspiring. Thank you for inspiring me and everyone listening or watching. This is an awesome business and you're doing it. You went from nothing to something very big and admirable. So I thank you for that. Where can we find you if we want to learn more?
You can go on YouTube and search Sonoma Strong hauling and we have hundreds of videos that walk you through how to start a business, how to make money with just a pickup truck, and how to grow your home service business, even if it's not junk removal.
Yeah, you can find me on Facebook, Matt, Vic, you can find us on Instagram, Sonoma Strong Hauling, and like the JoJo said, on YouTube. And one thing I want to do is I want to get one of those back there that you got.
Yeah, I see it.
That plaque back there.
Well, it'll happen faster than you think.
Right on.
Well, thank you, guys. You're awesome.
Thanks for having us. It's been great. Really.
Yeah, I appreciate it, for sure.
Absolutely. You may have heard, but Facebook just banned me completely. So on any platform, just like YouTube right here, that could happen at any given moment. So if you want to keep getting business plans for me or business ideas once a week for free, check out my newsletter, tkopod.com it's literally one long email per week. That's very tactical about how to start specific businesses. Tkopod.com.
